Installation - Linux

Overview

This section describes the installation process for Linux.

Target audience

Linux people who want to compile Kobuki driver, but not use ros

Procedure

Prerequirements

We use catkin to build. First of all you need to install some basic dependencies:

• cmake - A cross-platform, open-source build system.
• python - Python is a general-purpose, interpreted high-level programming language.
• wstool - Workspace tool for downloading sources.
• catkin_pkg - A Python runtime library for catkin.
• empy - A Python template library.
• nose - A Python testing framework.

  sudo apt-get install python-wstool cmake python-catkin-pkg python-empy python-nose python-setuptools build-essential

If you are not on Ubuntu you can typically find cmake, python in your system repos and at worst, you can install python modules from PyPi via pip.

Refer to the Catkin documentation for more details.

Catkin workspace

Next we must prepare a catkin workspace.

  mkdir ~/kobuki_core
  wstool init -j5 ~/kobuki_core/src https://raw.github.com/yujinrobot/kobuki_core/hydro/kobuki_core.rosinstall
  cd ~/kobuki_core
  export PATH=~/tmp/kobuki_core/src/catkin/bin/:${PATH}
  catkin_make
  cd build; make install

The utility catkin_make is just a wrapper around cmake/make. You can just as easily call cmake ../src with the appropriate variables for CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX amongst others and proceed from there. catkin_make has a few options to allow you to indirectly set these cmake variables (again, CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is a useful one, otherwise it defaults to ./install).

Testing your installation

You can test your installation by executing some of the demo and test programs provided with Kobuki driver. You must point your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable to the installed libraries. For example, if you type the following commands, the robot should move making squares:

  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/kobuki_core/install/lib
  ~/kobuki_core/install/lib/kobuki_driver/demo_kobuki_simple_loop

Cross compiling

We still have not prepared proper cross-compiling documentation, but have done so and we will be happy to help you.

Additional support

Do not hesitate to ask on Kobuki users list if you need additional support.